Seagulls. (rough rough draft)

I couldnt figure out the best way to pick the seagulls up off the wharf. There was really no getting around that it was my job, and after the events of last night, someone would have to sweep up the feathers, the beaks, the whole bits of bird piled, sometimes four deep. But town custodian or no, I was more concerned about the price of hay.
The thatching on my escape raft was nearly finished, and I’d done all necessary sawing, cutting, welding. Even the sail was complete. But given that most cloth materials were in such short supply I figured hay would be the way to go for cushioning. After all, I’d be on the raft a while.

Then last night happened. Without a lot of warning- some warning, but not a lot- the skyfighters returned and just made an absolute mess of the waterfront. Even in the days of heavy industry it’d never looked this bad. Dead seagulls everywhere. Wharf rats crawling through the bodies, carrying away half-eaten bags of chips left by fleeing shoppers. One giant Styrofoam middle finger, the calling card of the skyfighters.

Still, I couldn’t buy hay anywhere, not on town custodian wages. And paid vacation was out of the question.

I woke up with a note stuck to my ceiling saying my services would be required for at least another two weeks to deal with the mess. I am surprised my bosses survived the melee, frankly. The plan had been that I’d get some hay, finish the raft and disappear. It was crucial to do this before the onset of winter, when all the ocean trash freezes into sharp icicles, that launch into the sky due to displacement. Only this stops the skyfighters, their metal bodies crashing into the same sea that they patrol, their “peacekeeper” badges glowing at sunset. This wasn’t a fight I wanted in the middle of. There were only so many layers of irony I wanted to process at once.

But now here I am, staring at a whole wharf full of bird corpses. If I leave now, they’ll just funnel regeneration funds into Employee Retention funds, and not only will they find me and drag me back, the whole of fucking Bayside will still be a trash mound I have to sweep over. Revitalization. Ha. 

The question is where to take the birds, and how. My bags aren’t meant for anything this heavy duty; I’ll probably need to petition the Society of Feral Cats for their services. I hate that. Joan at the desk is always so smug. “You thought we were a bad idea, but now look at you.” She’ll probably call Shirley at the Urban Goat Alliance and have a good laugh. It’s not that I despise the usefulness of animals, it’s just that there are way too many of these beauracracies and if we don’t have money to keep the schools open, how the hell do we keep three Fitness Gorillas? At least Danny Felds is nice. I wouldn’t want him out of a job. I’ll keep that in mind the next time a city employee satisfaction survey gets passed around. Why they have the “check box if ____ should be fired” box is beyond me. Afterall, Joan is still here, and why? But then, I suppose so am I, and after the whole mess on Rockefeller street, I shouldn’t be. Well, hopefully I won’t be for long. If I could just get my vacation time figured; they never search for those who don’t come back, only those who leave. 

Will you look at the sunset over scorched feathers. The society for unusual bar ornamentation would love these. I could use a smoothie.

So I guess I should find my brooms. If this doesn’t take too long, I’ll just use the hay from them on the raft. And maybe these feathers. They have to be good for something.

11/30! A Scene We'd Usually Avoid!

Neckerchiefs. Cologne. Muscle relaxers-with a scent/how?
The grease in the hair and the grease in the thighs and the
grease the guy in the misfits shirt managed while sliding into
his pants. The one girl/guy couple, hottest in their near shirtlessness
by the window, attribute traffic to that.

We think the doorman suspects.

These lines of traffic-- we've come blocks just to
not get in. We are wobbling hard toward a club with
the right backbeat, we only want a slice and don't
care where we get it from.

The new city stomp, the old city hesitate.
The happy lipstick party inviting only half
of us. The crowd churned down Polk street

flying elbows, jutting knees, too much scent,
too much dirt for any where we'd go if--

but get the cameras right and
all you need is the rest of the
room and all you need is one good
picture, to say I've been here, I've
swung my fists, this is everywhere
I've been adult but so much worse,

better

10/30! Ashbury Heights!

"what's that flaming cathedral in the distance?"

this road winds like yarn. triangles and spirals and
houses clustered like apartments, apartments spread
like ramblers. Ropes around a narrowing hill.

When we talk about the city, we talk about The City.
Everything I know about this place I learned in
documentaries about Jefferson Airplane and
the film Basic Instinct. 

"you went to the mission and you got
tacos?"

a thick film of glass when we get over the
bridge from east bay, and the way that
everyone says "east bay" like a sentence,
after the show that starts awkward and ends
triumphant, the uber driver says "the city"

and the entrance feels like one
like it should, no long suburban
depression trailing into density,
too tired and building weary to
recognize.

This is not a poem about
san francisco,
it's a poem about knowing nothing
about it, but the hill, the
sillhouettes at midnight after
Oakland ends for us. It's about the imprint,
the "in a few years will Seattle seem--"

the new space forever,
frozen pizza thawing, the smell of
burning pepperoni spilling out into
the bay.

8/30! Addison Dispatch #4!

That molson ice pile by 306 hasn't moved for two days. The dog in 312 won't shut up

but a markered note offers to shut the bitch up in exclamation points. Seriously on

behalf of us all

shut the bitch

up.                                                    (with wire, with cloroform, with a baseball bat)

Head into the glass walls, Shane remarks that the max income requirements 

(a refreshing change)

would be considered middle class
(I thought we'd disappeared!)

                                                       in another city. In another city, I wouldn't need the requirements. I am no cigar maven, flicking his ash out against a movie about new york. A skyline in highlights that silences family who don't understand; like a movie star swoop from one frame to the next, the smith, columbia, municipal, hey.

The man in the stairwell isn't moving. Isn't smiling. Is yelling. Is swaying. Is dancing. Can of hurricane ice-- must be a different guy. Howling, screaming, dancing, the lady behind me asks if she can tell him to get the fuck out of the way or is that racist. The man behind her shouts "racist nothing," falls dick forward, they both hit two walls before landing. I shrink into walls.

Hammers on the left side. Drills on the right. Sirens every day. Not our fault. Not theirs.
Stacking piles of earplugs. New eyemasks. Prop up the bed with old hymnals. Shut down the door
with strings of tape. 

The walls are thin when you're trying to sleep, thick when you need help--
(is that you,
mark?

I was hoping you were dead, cussing out 

                                                     your mother
one last time in your braindead half-drawl

as they drove you to a 

landfill where scum like you grows 

                                                and

dies)

these heights bring out the best. Nod for a year at the lease-signer before
she remembers your name, 

(you are drunk, screaming down the hall

pulling

the fire alarm--
won't make up for no coats
or morning workouts--)

possibly for the best.

When you are in a place, and write about that place (part one of eighty five.)

Excited to be part of Greg Bem's outdoor reading series Ghost Tokens. I plan to read something near the MRX studio where Freeway Park had their first practices (before we had a name settled) and possibly wander down near the Siren Tavern, where I nearly got a job during my Orcas Landing days.

Events like this help me generate new material and answer questions to myself and listeners. Speaking of-- here's me doing just that with the aformentioned Bemstrosity as part of the Citydrift Project.

Trains and Tall Buildings 2: Growth as a given?

So it's official. Seattle is the USA's fastest growing major city.* Bigger than Boston, DC or Denver, edging up on cities like Memphis and Detroit, which have traditionally been thought of as far more important, flagship metropolises, while lil' ole Seattle was content to corner away up near Canada, with its fish and its rain and odd bursts of quirky architecture.
At least, that's often  how it got sold to outsiders; there's always been an internal struggle in town; people in Seattle want it recognized as an incubator of culture and ideas, but also want it for their own; best-kept secret with arts and culture and food and on a comparable level to** New York or wherever, but . . . ours.
(This spreads to the rest of the Northwest, and you have your Olympias and Bellinghams and Anacortes and Centralias cultivating relationships with the rest of the state in ways roughly analagous to how Seattle's had it's will they/won't they affair with the U.S. and world)

I'll totally cop to completely mixed feelings about the growth. I'm glad I live somewhere where not every single college grad is trying to cut me out of my bartending gig*** because nothing else is available. I'm glad that some of Seattle's ideas around fair payment and environmentalism can't be held up as economic hindrances. I'm glad people have jobs, and frankly, I think tall buildings are cool.
There's been a sense of quiet optimism over the last 20 years, so it's hard to see the current building and growth frenzy as some sort of triumphant turn around. As long as I thought about it, Seattle was a cool place to be, city parts, nature parts, family parts, rock and roll parts, lakes and weird retrofuture architecture. It still is all that, but now it's way harder to pay rent.
That said, some of us remember, or have parents who remember when that wasn't always the case. Seattle's seen some lean times. The 1970s are well before my realm of memory, but in a global sense that's recent. That we're in a boom time is neither something to be taken for granted, nor something that will always be the case.
As such, it makes sense to me that some of the most vitriolic anti-growthers**** are transplants, often here well under ten years. They never got to see this sign every time they left and entered the city.

*not sure how they measure "majorness." I think that means a city over 100,000 people. There are plenty of small farm communities that through annexation and development have jumped from 2,000 to 25,000 all over the country.

**or you know, a cheaper, acceptable version of said things. 

***only every third college grad. I'm also a college grad, and that line does smack of hypocrisy. maybe I'll write the blog post about why I'm at least breaking from trying to thrust myself into academia. (hint: I can pay the bills better and I like the work just as much, if in a different way.)

****this post may make it seem like I enthusiastically welcome our new luxury-dwelling amazon programming overlords. Anyone who has walked with me through Capitol Hill knows this isn't true, but the things I think are bullshit, the ways to address this sort of crazy growth, the multiplicity of dualities, these are things for their own Trains and Tall Buildings posts.

trains and tall buildings # 1. Intro.

I walk out of my apartment building every day, cross the street to a bus island and walk alongside the tunnel for the Great Northern Railroad.

Some days, given the right weather, mood and amount of time, it feels like I've moved not just neighborhoods, but cities entirely. Today is not quite one of those, but it comes close. Lately I've been trying to measure the ways that moving to the I.D./Pioneer Square has affected my life, mood and living style. I've been here for almost five months and it's felt five months; it feels almost like more. I'm going to start recording my thoughts on this (and other Seattle/City/"urban living" *blech*/sorts of thoughts) blog under the Trains and Tall Buildings tags. If you're one of the eight people who come here for poems, or one of the five-to-ten who are looking for general life updates, this will definitely not be a place for the former, and only questionably a place for the latter, as "how I'm doing here near downtown and what" will slide quite nicely alongside me talking about things like the shape of buildings or use of public space. 

So if you're interested in these things, yay. If not, you aren't alone.
One thing that is true about my life now is that I cannot simply walk out of my house at 6:42 to get to work by 6:58. I must go catch a train to avoid the shame of tardiness.

which is why this was largely just an intro, devoid of any real ideas or content. and I got you to read it!

Recap: PZS, PPS, Max ridin'

This weekend I bused south to Portland, Oregon to help Bryan table at the Portland Zine Symposium. He, I, and Rachel took turns browsing, explaining what a Babel/salvage is and trying to not spend all our money on art and zines. Though not trying that hard. I've got a nice little shelf's worth of art, politics, comics, and poetry zines I'll be working my way through over the next few weeks.
One of the recurring things you hear as a tabler is as follows:
"Oh wow, this is really cool. I mean, really cool. I don't have any money on me, though, will you be here tomorrow?"
Still, B/S was able to spread the good word through a few trades, card hand-offs, and even a purchase here and there.

I also featured at the Portland Poetry Slam at Backspace Coffee right in down/old town Portland. It's a great reading, energetic room, and the all-ages factor gives an urgency and life to the proceedings that helps the time pass quickly. That said, I felt a bit ambivalent about my own performance; I feel I've definitely done better readings for matching the mood/emotions of the crowd and connecting with folks.
Set: filthy jerry gets paid/ sharis parking lot/ little fear of drowning/ GRIFOLS-Biomat parking lot/ northward/ charity pledge drive/ foxes of bainbridge/ story problem.
Part of the issue, I think lies with the fact that both 'gets paid' and 'sharis' actually read a bit better in my head than they do on stage. About halfway through either of them I've already collected half a page of self notes on how to tighten them/perform them better. Leads to an editing-on-the-fly sitch that probably would have been better not to, you know, start with.
LEARNING!
Still, the crowd was generous, talked to some folks afterwards, saw old friends, and caught a bus with Rachel back to NEPO, where the bar was closed but the pizza place was open. The time not at PZS or the Slam is documented below:



One thing I find interesting when I'm in Portland is the constant overhearing of Cliche Conversations about Portland.
"Yeah, like, coming from L.A. I expected it to be way smaller, actually. But it's pretty big. . . but not that big. Like, it's a town that pretends to be a city."

Yeah, take a swig every time you hear one of those and you'll be drunk in ten minutes. But PDX actually strikes me as the opposite: it's a Big City (in general, american terms) that pretends to be a town, not the other way around. The gardens, the farmers markets, the single family homes and general lack of tall buildings outside of Downtown and the Rose Quarter give it a towny feel. But the infrastructure, the neighborhood-focused walkability, the mass transit, these are all city ammenities, but dressed down. How long that dressing down remains, who's to see. But Portland feels like a town, works like a city.

Seattle, on the other hand, has many ways in which it's a (huge) town still growing into it's practical cityhood; we're behind on transit and infrastructure, which is one of greatest indicators (in my mind) of urban living. That said, there's more of an outward-looking mindset in Seattle, where as Portland seems to be more localized, to both its benefit and detriment.

I write this on a bus, and have just entered Centralia.

#14: Mean Grill. #15: Pilsen Day One

meangrill fried-- monster breath intakes-- train squeals-- sobs-- red curtains green-- candles-- old hugs-- loud joke-- glasses-- tired hotdog-- kale jokes now-- wise beards bristle-- pinot shakes-- bartender metal-- we-- return-- don't laugh-- green-- last-- mill-- poem-- we remember-- wide mirrors-- divided by street-- we arrive-- use as segue-- we started-- nothing-- put-- in a trap-- dumb song loud-- trap set what?-- the the the-- new old new-- stools stacked jazz-- a trinity-- we-- fried bits of liquor-- who? -- wordswordswordswordswords

Pilsen Day One The three mannequins forming an alternate
internal skyline.
the one with blue hair, no pants,
one with
rainbow tits, no head,
one with a
monkey head, offsetting serious architecture.
Speakers. Bookshelves. Gloved marimba.

A German Shepherd bounds
down outdoor stairs.
We talk and talk and talk
and get tacos. That fall
all over our clothes.

After the library, a line at the triangle light.
Harrison Ford is filming a chase scene.
No one can cross.

Crooked crooked sidewalk cracks.

poli #3. post, post, post.

So. Here's the wrap-up on my end: I had a pre-election "here's why I voted for Obama" post (I wanted to post it pre-election to avoid either the smugness of victory or the bitterness of defeat.) There's a copy of it saved, un-posted, on this very blog. I wasn't quite finished with it, then hey, ran out of time. I also had plans for a "here's why you should vote however you see fit-- third party, go for it" post, because I do believe that the two party system can create a stagnation of choice and ideas. I've never seen a third party vote as throwaway, and I deplore the guilting that party-liners (especially Dems) heap upon people who aren't satisfied with the mainstream candidates. I also wanted to issue a plea for civility, but sorta sunk my own ship with Poli Post #2 (you can just scroll down.) That post was late at night, I was fed up with a lot of things (only some political) and so I went for it. But it was a lot more troll-i-er than thou than I was hoping.

But hey, I get angry sometimes, and when people are angry, they aren't always fair.

The large reason I didn't end up going through with my planned regimen of posts is simply a time/energy combo, but up until Monday night I was planning on busting a few out on Tuesday before results were known.

But Monday night, I was at Big Mario's, eating a pizza and drinking a Rainier, pre-hosting a poetry reading at RHH. I am generally used to being the oldest person there besides the staff, so when a couple roughly my folks' age came in, got some tequila, a beer, couple of slices and started talking to me, I was a little surprised.
They were visiting from Nevada-- North Nevada, they were quick to specify; the conservative part. They were here to visit Seattle for a dramatic topographical getaway, and to have conversations with people and try to convince me to vote for Romney. I told them my ballot was already mailed off. Once we got through the initial sweepy-volley of recriminations about "Young people" in "cities," we were actually able to hit on some common grounds, or at least talking points. I'd give a more complete rundown (he-- the guy did more of the talking-- does want universal heathcare, but felt Affordable Care act was poorly written and timed, to which I am open, however, the former is hardly a talking point on the National Republican Agenda; I am more than open to the idea that maybe the U.S. doesn't take China seriously enough as a threat, but both of us were sort of stymied on the "so what" part of that question-- he believes we'll all be dead in 25 years from an invasion) but I have a lot to do today, so I'll leave with these observations:

1) when they said they wanted to have a conversation, they actually wanted to have a conversation. People of all stripes are always saying "lets have a conversation" when they mean "let me talk."

2) After that, I didn't have the heart to post any vitriol or half-intellectual screeds on my political choices. There is, quite literally, the whole rest of the internet for that, and pictures of cats.

3) I doubt either of us was going to change eachother's minds. But it's good to get out of the echo chamber, and easier to do so in person, over pizza.

4) I don't also have the heart, or will, to get on any Gloat-Trains. I am happy Obama won. I am ESPECIALLY happy that pretty much any Senator who said at best ignorant, at worst vile things about rape   was handily defeated. The referrendums in Washington went largely my way. But I'm tired. Like a lot of people, like arguably, the President himself, I'm really exhausted by the finger pointing and blindness of punditry.
I don't know how the American Voting Populace can go from Ignorant, Neanderthal Racist Hicks, to Informed, Motivated Individuals Who Believe in the Cause and Are Getting Involved in a span of two years, or (conversely) Intelligent, Self-Sufficient Patriots to Money-Grubbing, Ignorant Dependents in a mere two years, but hey-- who knew? These are the sort of implied dialogues whenever a side wins/loses and it's hard not to get eye-rolly at that. 
Also. I wish Libs would admit that MSNBC is basically the lefty version of Fox News and should be treated as such.

anyway. I won't go so far as to post something about being given "hope" re: healing a divisive land, or whatever, but I will say that I left the conversation feeling better about the people behind the politics than I went in, and I think I'd say that even if things didn't go my way.

Driving the Purple Family Deathtrap Around the Acne-Scarred Backroads of the City

In the last week, i have had access to the Old Family Van. There is a New Family Van, that exists in Stanwood, Washington, where the only way to get places is in vans, preferably family ones, because what sort of person are you?

This was facilitated by a post-vacation wrap-up-family-viewing of John Carter and the Olympics (there's an opportunity for a joke here about ridiculous physical feats and gratuitously sexy costumes) and realizing that it was 12:45 am and I was in Greenwood, but lived in Rainier Beach, and thus, a van was loaned.

It's hard, when you have access to a car, to give up said access. Even for a transit-appreciator like myself, the ones-own-scheduleness of a car is a real thing.

 There's a few things, though: 1) Not sure if it's the air filter, or something more sinister, but the engine stops. Usually at red lights, but occasionally just, you know, when driving. So the freeway is out, as the procedure then is to put into Park, shut down, restart, drive. This can take less than five seconds, once you're up to speed, but 4 seconds on the Lake Union Bridge. . . 2) The whole thing always feels like it is about to crumble into bits and pieces. It has a vibrato to it that many a trained singer would be envious of (or try to avoid? I try to avoid trained singers.) 3) The brakes are fine, but sometimes it feels like they might not be, or rationally, could be the next thing to go, in this shaky stop-and-start beast that renders a trip from Columbia City to Ballard a near hour of travel.

 This has led to a lot of ducking and trekking through less-traveled Seattle backstreets, neighborhoods, figuring out which bridges I'm least likely to die on, which arterials have convenient side lanes I can coast into should the engine cut out at 40 miles per hour. And something that's come to mind is: Seattle's neighborhood names are kinda boring. I know that everywhere has boring neighborhood names, but a name like Fishtown at least gives a peak at history, and more importantly for my very shallow purposes, SOUNDS interesting.

Because while sputtering from the edges of Maple Leaf into View Ridge Heights and Broadview and Leafton Park Pines and Pinehurst and Greenwood and Meadow Ridge I couldn't help think: Where the fuck is our Hell's Kitchen? I WANT THE TENDERLOIN.

Yes, yes, history, blah blah, property values, blah blah, monsters. I wish you could drive from, say Maple Leaf, turn a corner and be in Cannibal Ridge. or something.

an escalation of violence in several southeast neighborhoods

and you are big, ish, tall, ish,
lumber like something tough or clumsy.

but no fights since fourteen
or one joke-out-of-hand-with-your-cousin
that had to stop --
bartenders.

and there's nothing you've got that anyone
could fence for much,
and if it's all so co-ordinated
or just conveniently along every transit hub
you've lived in, well you are big, ish,
and your coat is torn and bad shoes and

you have a beard so
no reason to fuck with you

but somehow, an evening walk
just seems out of the question,
and you are big, ish, tall, ish, can
run

but if you wait too long, then it's too late
and you are fast, ish, but if you start
too soon, then chase becomes inevitable

and the cops post bulletins advising people
to walk shivering and terrified in groups of three
or more, bereft of books or money or music
or all things that made the transit
work as a second home and you are smart, ish,

but

Involuntaries

clings to the rail
then
skirts the edge,
sine-waving all over the sidewalk.

shudder. spasm.

clung-clung-clang on thin bridges
torso wants the ground
hair wants the five feet,
fifteen,
twenty,
fifty

arms want to clothesline strangers, teeth to dig into faces of nearleaning friends, legs the radials of 18 wheelers, throat clearing constant in libraries, the fuck-thefuck-thefuck, even reading a book, full-on engaged, hands reach for low hanging powerlines

intentions irrelevant
steps clipped
he begins to lean

Five Videos, Zero Context (koreatrip #3)